I do not like being sick.

I don’t like being sick one bit. I had to leave work early due to a mysterious illness. Once I got home, my roommate asked me if I wanted to go see Contagion. Yes. Exactly! I’m sick and dying and please, YES, let’s go watch a movie where people are sick and dying! That will help!

(In case you don’t know, I am a wimp when it comes to illness. I just like to curl into a ball and whine until it gets better. I’m like my dad. And yes, I’m sure he would be very glad to know I just called him a wimp on my blog.)

I took a nap for over two hours, and am now sitting on my bed eating saltines and getting crumbs everywhere. I’m also playing on Pottermore, which is my newest web fascination. It’s an interactive fan website for Potterheads. I had to find the magical quill hidden on the site a few weeks ago (at 4:00 am, mind you) in order to gain early access, as the site is only open to us beta testers until Halloween, when the general public (and less-obsessed folks) will be allowed to register.

Now, I’ll admit, most of me only wanted to get on it in order to be “sorted” into one of the four Houses at Hogwarts. Growing up with the books, I always wondered which House I would be put in, and kind of always thought I’d either be a Hufflepuff (the nice, friendly ones) or a Ravenclaw (the smart, witty ones) because I’m certainly not a Slytherin (cunning) or a Gryffindor (brave). But this whole summer, I’ve been absolutely smitten by Hufflepuff, thanks to the sarcastic musical parody of the HP series I found on YouTube. It’ll take me too long to explain, but there are some really funny, ongoing jokes about Hufflepuffs in the show, including a line that goes, “Hufflepuffs are particularly good finders!” I mean, come on, I am a librarian. I LIVE to find information.

So I got hooked on being a Hufflepuff.

And then the Pottermore email finally arrived in my inbox on Saturday morning. And it made me a Ravenclaw. I was seething.

No, but really. I slammed my laptop shut and went and punched my pillow. Repeatedly. And then refused to ever go back onto Pottermore.

But… then I got sick and curiosity got the better of me.

So I re-read part of the “welcome letter” the Ravenclaw prefect gave me. And then, this happened:

“Another cool thing about Ravenclaw is that our people are the most individual – some might even call them eccentrics. But geniuses are often out of step with ordinary folk, and unlike some other houses we could mention, we think you’ve got the right to wear what you like, believe what you want, and say what you feel. We aren’t put off by people who march to a different tune; on the contrary, we value them!”